Commerce Opportunities and Beyond
When successful search engine marketing programs direct Web users to an online store, there are a number of things that can happen:

• Generate one-time sales of targeted content. A consumer buys a report or a book with a credit card, driving immediate revenue for your company.

• Drive sales leads. Many search engine marketing programs deliver targeted traffic to a place where people can sign up for a free e-mail newsletter, register for a Web seminar or in-person event, or down load a white paper. As a way to build qualified leads for larger purchases or paid subscriptions, search engine marketing is very effective.

• Monetize traffic for advertising-supported sites. Often, the end goal for publishers is to drive as many qualified and relevant visitors as possible to a portal or content site that derives income from banner advertising, sponsorships and programs like Google AdSense.

• Build your organization’s reputation in the market. Content does more than just sell itself, a product, or an idea: it sells your brand.

Leveraging your specific content with highly targeted phrases gets fewer, but better clicks for each phrase. With many phrases optimized, you get more overall traffic than when you attempt to drive traffic by relying on generic search terms. If you set up thousands of individual search programs, each one won’t generate much as a stand-alone marketing campaign. But all of the individual campaigns will add up to much more traffic than targeting the broad, generic keywords and phrases.

In just a decade, Web search engines have fundamentally changed the way people look for information. Ten years ago, we all still flipped through yellow pages and newspapers, or phoned reference librarians. Some people still do these things today. But for the vast majority of us – particularly businesspeople – research begins with the search. How marvelous the convenience of finding what you need in a manner of seconds, from the comfort of your desk, or kitchen counter, or a table at Starbucks.

Better Search Marketing Programming

Mine keywords from titles, descriptions, and metadata for large content sets.Use the words and phrases that your buyers do. Think about how the people you want to reach are searching and develop programs that include those words and phrases. Don’t get trapped by your own jargon; think, speak, and write like your customers do.

Use more than keywords. Use key phrases.And make sure they respond to your customers’ specific needs.

Titles and subtitlesOften titles and subtitles are highly descriptive just the sort of detailed search that your buyers are entering into search engines right now.

Author namesAs authors develop followings in the market, people often search on their names — you should make those names search engine friendly.

Article or report descriptionsIt is critical to surface highly descriptive, keyword-rich summaries and abstracts so search engines can find them.

Tables, charts, and graphsHow many times have you searched for very specific number, trend, or statistic? By optimizing the descriptions of this key content, publishers capture the interest of people who are searching for it.

MetadataMake metadata available for the search engines to find — for example, companies or people or industries mentioned in the article or report.

Content at the article is ripe for keyword mining. For many organizations, the keywords and phrases are already in the content descriptions.

Unlike companies that sell physical products that require creation of search terms for each item, publishers and authors live in a keyword-rich environment, they sell words – usable as keywords.